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The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

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Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#41

Post by Leszek »

izacus wrote: post #40
Leszek wrote: post #20

Anecdotal, and I don't want it to sound like my example is intended to disprove this research or anyone else's experience, but I personally find it extremely fatiguing if people _don't_ turn on their video. More specifically, when I'm talking in a meeting or giving a presentation, I find it very helpful to see other people, see their reactions, see whether they laugh at jokes or look confused when I'm bad at explaini…

> Anecdotal, and I don't want it to sound like my example is intended to disprove this research or anyone else's experience, but I personally find it extremely fatiguing if people _don't_ turn on their video. Both can be true right? This study just studied the effect of persons own camera while participating. However, it doesn't really say much about how turning off camera affects other participants that are now left…

Fair point - I was being careful with phrasing because I have a pet peeve about people trying to disprove research with anecdotes, but you're right that this is a somewhat different scenario.

Indeed, supposing that both this research and my anecdote are valid, it'd be a rather unfortunate asymmetry in remote work, a fatigue issue that has no good solution which doesn't require one of the participants to compromise.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#42

Post by glandium »

jbm wrote: post #19
lnanek2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a cultural thing? My girlfriend is Chinese and I've never seen her do a "call" that wasn't actually a video call on WeChat. Japan also has had video calling for much longer than it took Apple to popularize FaceTime over here in the West. They were also ahead on VoD, for long train rides, I suppose, due to mass transit being more popular.

While テレビ電話 may have been a fad, in my 12 years in Japan I almost never used it, nor did anyone I know use it on a regular basis. (Unrelated, I think LINE completely took over the whole "communication market" and now people are addicted to async conversations)

Related, the LINE app that everyone uses in Japan can do video calls too, and that's barely used.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#43

Post by tkgally »

mirekrusin wrote: post #38
tkgally wrote: post #5

From the abstract: “[W]e propose and test a model where study condition (camera on versus off) was linked to daily feelings of fatigue; daily fatigue, in turn, was presumed to relate negatively to voice and engagement during virtual meetings. We further predict that gender and organizational tenure will moderate this relationship such that using a camera during virtual meetings will be more fatiguing for women and ne…

Avatars should be solution for you then, right?

Yes, avatars would help me remember students better. They would need to be usable in Zoom, as that is the platform our university has chosen for the time being.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#45

Post by makeitdouble »

crubier wrote: post #39
desertraven wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do video calls, but my partner does them often for work. The other day she mentioned that you're able to see who is looking at your video feed because their eyes looks directly at you (akin to them looking into the webcam). I'm not sure if she was mistaken, or if there's some kind of eye tracking/image processing stuff going on to do this. FYI it was Microsoft Teams.

Basic reasoning will tell you that people who “look at you” during a video call are actually people who look at their camera.

Looking at it from the other way round, putting the active window (whatever it is) right below the camera makes the other side feel like getting attention.

Making the window small enough to not generate much eye movement when scrolling around is a refinement.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#46

Post by makeitdouble »

Leszek wrote: post #20

Anecdotal, and I don't want it to sound like my example is intended to disprove this research or anyone else's experience, but I personally find it extremely fatiguing if people _don't_ turn on their video. More specifically, when I'm talking in a meeting or giving a presentation, I find it very helpful to see other people, see their reactions, see whether they laugh at jokes or look confused when I'm bad at explaini…

This is true and also something we eventually get used to I think.

I've seen the same flow happening IRL, where people new to the team expected a somewhat responsive crowd when they present, just to be met with a wall of laptop screens and inscrutable faces when the time comes.

To be clear the people in the room were paying attention, and effectively cross checking info and exploring the points they wanted to focus on. They just didn't give any feedback to the presenter until the end of the presentation, when it's time to discuss the details.

It can be seen as socially rude, but to us it was really efficient: instead of telling the presenter we'll give feedback another time, at the end of the presentation we already had a rough opinion with a modicum of confidence in the numbers or facts to discuss. Doing all of that checking before the meeting is another way to do it, but honestly I'm not sure it's much better.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#47

Post by atq2119 »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #22
Leszek wrote: post #20

Anecdotal, and I don't want it to sound like my example is intended to disprove this research or anyone else's experience, but I personally find it extremely fatiguing if people _don't_ turn on their video. More specifically, when I'm talking in a meeting or giving a presentation, I find it very helpful to see other people, see their reactions, see whether they laugh at jokes or look confused when I'm bad at explaini…

I've worked from home for a decade now, and I've found the people who want cameras on in meetings are the folks who don't normally work remote. They're not used to not seeing reactions, so it throws them when nobody has a camera on. The people who have worked remote for a while - at least since before covid - don't ever use their camera.

It's not even about home office work necessarily, it's about whether there's a long-term culture of having remote conversation. The company I work for is old by tech standards, and has always had fairly distributed offices. People there have been doing remote conferencing long before video conferences were a thing, and the culture is a bit mixed but leaning heavily towards not turning on video.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#48

Post by TeMPOraL »

digitalsushi wrote: post #4

I find it a bit amusing, and a bit tiring, how our body language and emotive faces have instantly reacted to network drops and lags; at your next meeting watch how vigorously your teammates nod, and how wide they smile, and how much teeth they show, so that the faintest smirk will be remembered.

On that note, I've noticed that the height at which my hands are doing gestures has changed to accommodate my work laptop's webcam...

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#49

Post by tsjq »

noisy_boy wrote: post #7

Several people on our team do not turn-on video during meetings. I also do not like to turn-on video for our stand-up calls - those are fact oriented and whatever I'm saying is sufficient to convey the details (one-on-one meetings would be a different scenario). Citrix on Linux seems to have issues exposing external webcams and this has worked to my advantage because once I found out about this issue, I simply presen…

yes. 95% of meetings at my office do not ask for video. one day the manager joked: "anyone who wants other parties to turn on video , should inform atleast a two hours in advance. we need to shave, find an ironed shirt and put it on, make arrangements for kids / pets to stay outside of the room."

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#50

Post by yosito »

crubier wrote: post #39
desertraven wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do video calls, but my partner does them often for work. The other day she mentioned that you're able to see who is looking at your video feed because their eyes looks directly at you (akin to them looking into the webcam). I'm not sure if she was mistaken, or if there's some kind of eye tracking/image processing stuff going on to do this. FYI it was Microsoft Teams.

Basic reasoning will tell you that people who “look at you” during a video call are actually people who look at their camera.

> people who look at their camera

You mean psychopaths?

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